


End Of Desire

by yourcrookedheart



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s04e04 Marry Fuck Kill, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 13:28:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19151977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourcrookedheart/pseuds/yourcrookedheart
Summary: Julia is trying to solve the mystery of her indestructibility and enlists Kady for help. Things don't entirely go as planned, but when do they ever?





	End Of Desire

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was meant for the Magicians Ladies Appreciation Week for "Female-Centric Season 4 AU". Obviously I failed to make the deadline, but hopefully I can entertain some people with this story anyway. The idea was largely inspired by [this gifset](https://queennsansa.tumblr.com/post/185298154118/jamesbond-anyone-come-to-mind).
> 
> Some of the dialogue was lifted from 4x04 and 4x07, with changes.

“Can’t you ask Twenty-Three?” Kady says, nose buried in a folder, boots propped up on the coffee table on top of some books from Julia and Quentin’s last Monster-related study session. Ripley the puppy is curled onto her lap. She hasn’t looked up since Julia approached her.

“I mean, I could. He’s just a little—you know.”

Kady grabs a handful of salty cashew nuts and pops a few into her mouth, a wry smile spreading. “Yeah.”

“It’ll be quick,” Julia promises. “In and out, and I’ll let you go back to—” Too late she realizes she doesn’t know what Kady’s been up to. Something that requires a lot of going through files and taking notes. It’s a little strange to see Kady so caught up in a thing that involves this amount of reading. Kady with her brand new apartment, and her cute puppy and her business casual blazers. The times they are a-changin’. Julia feels like she’s continuously been five steps behind ever since she woke up at Brakebills, Kim-the-architect sliding off her like shedding a second skin. She’d feel better about it if she had any more idea of who the Julia beneath is.

But that’s what today is all about—figuring out why she’s indestructible. A whole new project to dedicate herself to, something she actually has the potential to fix. She can’t be the person Penny sees when he looks at her, she can’t turn back time to revisit Blackspire and ensure the Monster never sees the light of day. She can’t take away the loss of Q’s dad, or bridge the distance to where he hides. But she can do this.

Whatever it is in Julia’s words that convinces her, Kady ends up agreeing, closing the file with a sigh and getting up from the couch. “You owe me,” she says, curtly.

And that’s the second reason for this whole Fillory trip. Because Julia may not be able to fix a lot in this state without her magic, but she can mend some things. It was never magic that broke things between her and Kady, and magic isn’t a cure-all. The past few years have taught her that much.

They need Penny to drop them off in Fillory, of course, which is awkward, though not as awkward as him tagging along would be. “I’ll check back in in a couple of hours,” he says, making it sound like a question. Kady rolls her eyes, visible to Julia and Penny both.

Julia offers a smile. He’s sweet, he really is. She’d never admit it to anyone, especially not now, but Penny—the Penny from before, Kady’s Penny—always intrigued her, the kind of rough-around-the-edges guy who was so very different from her usual type, yet beautiful and charismatic enough to catch her eye.

New Penny is different. She knows she’d only have to smile at him the right way to fall into his bed, and it’d be easy. Sweet sunrises and words like _soulmates_. The kind of boyfriend she’d sought in Daniel and then James—patient, adoring James who deserved so much better than the woman she became.

It’s not fair to Penny, but in her darker moments, when the hopelessness of their situation gets to her, he reminds her of the James who found her in her dark apartment while she was strung out on hedge spells and burning the fuse of everything she’d worked for, incapable of ever returning to the skin of the girl he’d fallen in love with. She’s pulled herself together since then, but she’ll never again be that bright-eyed honor student that James and Penny searched for behind her gaze.

“Thanks,” she says, and then Penny’s gone, leaving Julia and Kady in the Fillory woods to follow the thrum of voices drifting through the trees.

Josh told her Bacchus had died with a warning that things might’ve gotten out of hand in the meantime, and as such she expected some sort of bacchanal worthy of a god of debauchery and celebration. Instead, they find the aftermath, a wasteland of bodies out cold with empty bottles clutched in their sleep-slack hands. Near a thick tree, a woman pulls a noose over her head.

“Woah,” Kady says, at the same time Julia raises her hands in a plea.

“You don’t want to do that.”

Mascara tear tracks streak down the woman’s cheeks as she holds the noose in front of her face, irked at the interruption. “Why not?”

“Because you have so much left to live for?” Julia tries.  

As it turns out Shoshana doesn’t have much left to live for at all, being a Maenad of a dead god and all that, but with Kady’s rousing voice and Julia’s desperate appeal, they manage to lure her away from the tree in order to help them.

Shoshana doesn’t feel very helpful, though Julia is willing to acknowledge that it seems she’s at least trying to be. Which doesn’t mean a whole lot, but Julia’s options are limited at the moment. Desperate times call for—letting a Maenad circle her with a pinecone on a stick as Kady does a terrible job hiding her amusement, apparently.

In another universe, Julia’s trying to survive business school without burning out. There’s days like these when the whole thing since stepping out of the elevator at Brakebills still seems like a very elaborate dream.

An LSD-fueled dream, maybe.

“There’s a ritual that could help diagnose you further,” Shoshana says, after she’s inexplicably licked the pinecone. “But,” she pauses deliberately, “it’s pretty intimate.” Her gaze is pointed, stressing ‘intimate’ like a verbal wink.

Julia doesn’t know how to explain to Shoshana that after everything, she was expecting a lot worse than an _intimate_ ritual, whatever that means. “Okay,” she says. “I can live with that.”

“Yeah, the only thing is—I can’t perform it.” Shoshana talks like she’s explaining first grade math to toddlers. It’s pretty fucking annoying. All of this will be worth it for the answers, Julia reminds herself, as Shoshana continues, “I don’t believe in you. I can help interpret, but you need someone who _believes_ in you, who worships you, body and soul, to perform the ritual. Anyone come to mind?”

Kady snorts behind her, and Julia doesn’t need to turn around to know she’s rolling her eyes again. “Told you you should’ve asked him. Guess we’ll wait until he returns, then.”

“Fuck,” Julia sighs.

They end up in one of the empty tents, one that doesn’t smell _too_ much like grief-orgies, with a bottle of low-end tequila. Julia hasn’t had tequila since College junior year, that time she hooked up with her TA at a party and hated herself for it every time Q brought up the fact that she’d had sex with a guy named Chad.

Anyway. No tequila since then.

“God, this is terrible,” she says after the first swig from the bottle. “Now I remember why I don’t drink this shit.”

“I thought that had to do with _Chad_ ,” Kady says.

Julia really needs to stop telling that story.

It’s not how she planned to spend this trip—more questions and no answers, waiting for Penny to return because she couldn’t just step up and deal with his devotion. And now she’ll have to anyway, for an _intimate ritual_.

Irony’s a bitch.

Goal two, though, that one’s working out all right. Kady’s next to her, not overly social but then, when is Kady ever these days? They’re sharing a bottle of tequila and their shoulders are almost touching, and if Julia squints she can almost pretend it’s like the old days.

“Hey, uh,” Julia says. Pauses. “What were you up to, earlier? With the files?”

Kady deliberates for a moment, then takes a drink from the bottle and puts it in the space between her spread legs. “Sam the cop. She had her life all figured out, you know? I mean, it was fake as shit, all of it, just a cardboard cutout of a person. But she was helping people, and it made her feel good. Like she—meant something.” Kady’s hands keep wandering like she doesn’t know where to put them. It’s more than she’s said to Julia in months, and she isn’t done.

“Six months ago she met a woman on the job. Bruises around her eyes and jaw. Shitty husband, nothing new there. But Sam couldn’t prove anything.” Kady’s grin is grim but resolute. “Cause Sam didn’t have magic.”

“You’re solving her old case files?”

“Look,” Kady says, a little defensively, “you lived as Kim for months. The moment you got your memory back, you just dropped it like it never happened. I can’t do that.”

Kim feels more like a fuzzy memory to Julia with each passing day. The cardboard cutout stuff, that she remembers. How bare it all felt upon waking up at Brakebills, an Instagram account life—all glossy surface and nothing beneath. She’s had the offer of that before, when Martin proposed to take away her Shade, and her attitude hasn’t changed: she’ll take the pain over the vacant nothing any day.

But it’s different for Kady, apparently. “I—get that,” Julia says, trying to understand.

“I can’t go back to being a sidekick, Jules.”

Something about Kady’s pleading _Jules_ tugs at Julia, unearths something deep-seated and simmering. Without being able to explain it, she wants to tell Kady she misses her, even though she’s right there, even though she’s been there the entire time. “You’re not a sidekick,” she says instead.

Kady scoffs. “Oh come on. Says the hero of the story. I’m only in this group because of Penny.” Her agitated hands find the bottle, though she doesn’t drink from it. “And Penny’s gone.”

“That’s not true. You’ve got me.”

“Do I? I mean, we were friends. And then we weren’t, and now we’re—whatever you call it when you have a lot of history that made you two very different people.”

Martin. Leaving Penny in the lurch with his cursed hands. The Free Traders, and Richard, and then Reynard. Losing her Shade, the need for Kady’s presence that pierced through the hazy numbness. Reynard, again. Penny, slipping away despite their desperate efforts. “That’s not just my fault,” Julia says.

Kady’s lips press together into a thin line. “I didn’t say it was.”

When did this conversation become an argument? It’s not as if Julia is angry with Kady.

Except maybe she is, just a bit. Because Kady was her friend, and then she wasn’t, and it wasn’t just Julia’s fault. The same way Kady is angry at her, years of messy, conflicting feelings piling on top of each other.

Julia’s tired of being angry.

“I don’t even know what to apologize for first,” she says. “Like—are you still mad about Reynard?”

Kady laughs, low and throaty. “Oh yeah.”

“Then I’m sorry for that.” Daringly, she smiles when Kady turns to her. It’s worth it when Kady smiles back.

Maybe this is mendable. What had Richard said, at the hospital? His twelve-steps, spiritual bullshit was—well, bullshit, but he’d been right about some things. Like how believing in something isn’t always futile, or how sometimes it’s worth connecting to others, even if that means granting them access to the ugly parts of yourself. Owning up to her own mistakes has never been Julia’s strongest suit, but shouldn’t it mean something that she’s trying?

“When Penny was dying, you were the one who helped me,” Kady says. “And then after—every time, you pulled me back from the edge. Fucking up doesn’t change that.”

“I miss talking to you.” Julia’s voice breaks on the last word and she’s grateful for the dim lighting of the tent as her face heats up. She risks a look at Kady and meets her eyes.

“Me too,” Kady replies, little more than a murmur. “Best bitches, right? That shit’s forever.”

Julia still has her half of the pendant, in a box that holds her childhood pictures and some keepsakes—ticket stubs from her first concert (The Academy Is…), letters from her dad when he was at Bellevue, her spelling bee certificates, a necklace James gave her for their five-year anniversary. And the golden pendant, one half of a broken heart.

“Best bitches,” Julia echoes.

“I’ll drink to that.” Kady takes a sip of tequila and hands over the bottle, her face scrunched up. “Shit. Look at us talking about our feelings.”

“Awful.”

“Horrifying.”

“Abominable.”

The laughter takes Julia by surprise, an elated, almost manic type of joy. It warms her from the deep core inside to the tips of her fingers, not unlike the way magic used to feel back when she still had it, and just as good.

“I’m sorry about Penny,” she says, once they’ve both calmed down. “I’m not gonna—I don’t want to do that to you.”

“It’s fine—”

“It’s not fine, Kady. It’s fucking weird.” Julia resents a little bit that the universe put her in this position. Maybe if she hadn’t seen the way Kady ripped out pieces of herself to keep Penny alive. If she hadn’t found her, lifeless, hopeless without Penny to keep her going. Maybe then she would’ve been able to look at Penny and seen potential, rather than life-changing loss.

Kady remains silent, but as she takes another drink the movement pushes her a little further into Julia’s space so they’re leaning into each other, and when she puts the bottle down again she stays where she is. This was what Julia missed those months without her Shade, what she knew she’d have to give up as a goddess: the revel of casual intimacy that is the heat of Kady’s body palpable even through layers of clothing, and the soft rise-and-fall of her breathing that, sat like this, Julia can feel rather than hear.

“Hey, look,” Kady says, and then doesn’t continue. The prolonged silence along with the serious tone of her voice sends a sharp worry through Julia. She hums a question, urging Kady to go on. “Look,” Kady repeats. “I was thinking—we should just try this ritual.” The last words come out in an avalanche, as if expelled from her lungs.

It does very little to calm down Julia’s heartbeat. “The ritual that requires someone to ‘worship me, body and soul’?”

“It’s probably not that literal. And anyway, I believe in you.” Kady says it like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “Or,” she drawls, “we can just wait for Twenty-Three to return, and then you can explain it to him.”

Julia tries to mimic Kady’s casualness. “Valid argument.”

The thought of doing this ritual with Penny is embarrassing because she’ll have to explain to him all the things it cannot mean. Doing the ritual with Kady would be embarrassing for different reasons, none of which she can voice right now. Hardly safer, not with Kady’s deep eyes waiting for a reply.

“Fine,” Julia says, seeing absolutely no way out of this. At least she’ll get her answers, she tells herself. “I’ll go get Shoshana.”

A skeptical Shoshana explains the ritual to Julia and provides her with a basin of oil, which Kady will have to—

“Massage into your skin, yes,” Shoshana says. “Then use the water to remove the oil, and I can read it.”

“Like tea leaves,” Julia says.

Shoshana frowns. “Do I look like an amateur who reads tea leaves?” She clearly doesn’t think much of Julia’s goddesshood, which Julia privately thinks is pretty rich coming from someone who used to worship the divine equivalent of an aging fratboy. A little irritated, she carries the two basins over to the tent, where Kady is now sitting on the bed, staring off into space. The reddish hues from the filtered light create an intimate atmosphere, welcoming and yet tense. Or maybe the latter is just Julia, working herself up over something that shouldn’t be a big deal.

“So do you want to—” Julia nods towards the bed.

Instead of calling her over, Kady gets up, takes the two bowls from Julia and puts them on a table. “Just stand there,” she says. “You should probably take off your shirt, too.”

Julia’s grateful for Kady’s steady voice and the fact that she’s taking the lead here, expelling most of the awkwardness in a smooth and confident dance that Julia can’t help but admire. She unbuttons her shirt, one button at a time, painfully slow while Kady dips her fingers into the oil and rubs her hands together.

“Did you ever have to do this at Brakebills?” Julia says, just to fill the silence. Kady turns. She very politely keeps her gaze above Julia’s neck.

“Not this, but something similar. Then we turned into geese.”

“Let’s hope that’s not where this ritual is going.”

Kady chuckles, close enough now that her breath brushes the bare skin of Julia’s collarbones. She raises her hand, shiny with oil. “Okay?” she asks.

Julia shrugs. “Done worse for magic.”

The first touch of Kady’s fingers is like the rippling energy of a spell gone right. Julia jumps a little at the contact, and Kady draws her hand back.

“I won’t break, you know,” Julia says when she recognizes the wariness in Kady’s eyes.

“I know that.” Kady blows out a breath through her teeth. “I can’t worship you if you’re gonna be annoying.” Then she softens, her shoulders relaxing. “Would it help if I took off my shirt too? Or is that just more awkward,” she says, trying to lighten the mood before the odd tension suffocates them.

“It’s fine. Just—keep going.”

This time Julia makes sure to keep very still when Kady’s slick fingers trace a path down her neck, along her shoulder, down her bare arm. By the time Kady reaches her wrist she’s run out of oil, and their skins graze, the light scratch of Kady’s nails chasing the soft pads of her fingers. She does the same thing on the other side. Neck, shoulders, arm, then up again, ending with both of her palms resting on the tender skin of Julia’s collarbones. Then, very carefully, she slides them down, over Julia’s heart and down her breasts, her thumbs skirting dangerously close to Julia’s nipples.

“Cold?” Kady asks when Julia shivers. Julia just shakes her head, and the corners of Kady’s mouth curl ever so slightly. Her eyes track the direction of her hands. Between Julia’s breasts, down to her belly button, then back up. She must be able to sense Julia’s accelerated pulse, if not see it. The quick staccato of it. Julia’s skin feels too hot, her blood beating right beneath the surface.

Kady ducks behind her. More smooth, fiery trails down Julia’s back, pausing just above the waist of her jeans, and Julia only regrets not being able to see Kady’s elegant Magician’s hands performing this earthy spell, so unlike battle magic but coming just as easily to her. The soft whispers of hot breath stroking the back of Julia’s neck almost make up for the lack of visual.

“Think this is working?” Julia asks, quietly so as not to disturb the gossamer thread of familiarity that binds them here. Kady’s hands are tangled into her hair.

“I think we’re acing this,” Kady whispers into her ear, and then her hands snake down to undo the button on Julia’s pants.

They find their way to the bed eventually, where Kady kneels between Julia’s legs and runs her hands up her calves and thighs. Julia hasn’t shaved in days. It’s something she used to be self-conscious about, but not now. Kady’s gaze, which she can feel just as much as the touch of her hands, burns.

Kady’s right—Julia feels worshiped.

Hips, thighs, the dip between the two. Shoshana was vague at best about the specifics of the ritual, and Kady’s not taking any risks, skipping nothing but the most intimate areas.

Then, with nothing but a small pool of oil left in the basin, Kady ducks her head and presses her lips to the inside of Julia’s knee. “Think we’re good, your Divine Grace?”

She looks up, meets Julia’s eyes. A few tendrils of hair have come loose, framing her face. “I don’t know,” Julia says, undone and honest, and then Kady’s hands slide behind her neck to pull her mouth down to Kady’s.

It feels like such a natural extension of the ritual, or maybe none of it was about the ritual in the first place. Maybe it was about them all along, about who they’ve been and who they’ve become. Kady kisses her, and Julia feels like a well of magic has bubbled to life—softer than her old magic, quieter than divinity.

It’s when Kady’s hands start drifting, aimlessly teasing along the road they mapped earlier, that Julia grows restless. She’s never felt like a goddess made to be worshiped, not in the way the gods she’s met have presented it to her, a passive receptor to affection. Instead, she guides Kady’s hand to the one place she’s neglected so far, tucks her head into Kady’s hair and says, “Finish it”.

Kady does. She’s always been a gifted Magician and it’s no surprise that she’d be adept at this too, her hands and mouth conspiring to bring Julia to the edge, again and again, teasing and sure. Maybe it’s the pure magic of the ritual, maybe it’s just Kady and this sequestered moment they’ve stolen from their daily lives, and maybe it’s a combination of the two—this floaty feeling of freedom.

The basin is just within Julia’s reach and she dips her fingers in, tracing Kady’s cheekbones and eyelids and pulling her hair free from its knot so it trails over her neck and Julia’s thighs. Then she leans back and lets Kady’s magic wash over her.

Kady looks smug, after, as she silently removes the oil from Julia’s skin. The water is cold in the wake of her warm palms, but not uncomfortably so. Just refreshing, the clean smell of a Fillorian spring.

Before they leave the tent, the both of them back in a state of relative order, Kady pulls Julia back. “We’re good, right?” she asks.

Julia hasn’t felt this happy in months, at least, probably longer. She smiles, kisses the edge of Kady’s lips. “Better than good.”

Even after reading the oily waters, Shoshana can’t provide many answers, just that Julia’s still a confirmed goddess and that she’s gained her first disciple in Shoshana, something that seems like it’ll be more of a hindrance than an asset. When Penny returns to pick them up and asks whether she got what she was looking for, Julia spies Kady’s grin from the corner of her eyes.

“Pretty much,” she replies, taking Kady’s hand in hers as Penny whisks them away.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](https://queennsansa.tumblr.com).


End file.
